


I Long To Feel Some Beauty In My Heart

by ParadifeLoft



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Multishipping, includes minor F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four people who passed in, and then out, of Shepard's life. And one who stayed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Long To Feel Some Beauty In My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god what even am I doing here... Well, I guess mostly I'd been intending for a while to write some Mass Effect fic, and then Femslash February came up and I was like, well, since I'm kicking myself into writing things I'm not as used to I should probably work on a couple ME things kicking around in my head as well. Hmm. I suppose this is mostly a testament to my rather odd idea of what shipping is, particularly how though it always includes some sort of connection, some chemistry, between characters, said connection is as often as otherwise not entirely romantic/sexual in nature. But anyway.  
> Oh, and one other note, is that I do write with my own custom Shepard, including using her first name in narration where it's, hrrmm, I suppose rhetorically/thematically appropriate or useful, is the best way to put it. In any case, onwards!

_Ilium._

Truth be told, Maryn Shepard was not exactly the sort to do sudden unexplained favours for minor acquaintances just because they happened to ask.

Especially when the asking of said favour came in the guise of repaying a promise to buy her a beer for previous services rendered.

But despite her initial skepticism, she was finding she didn't regret helping out yet again. It turned out, that when you separated a person from her bloodthirsty corporate workplace, from a planet with air and soil as frozen as her colleagues' consciences, there was a chance she wouldn't actually be half-bad company.

Not half-bad indeed, said the laugh that crept from Maryn's mouth when Gianna described, rather colourfully, some of the outrageous things she'd busted a fair number of bigwig executives for over the years. Said the hint of a smile that emerged as she took her leave, in reply to the mention of a bar (swanky, upscale; this was Ilium after all) Gianna would be at later in the evening and the accompanying twitch of her eyebrows.

Really actually pretty good company, she amended, several hours later, under dimmer lighting and a couple shots of an asari liquor vaguely reminiscent of old-fashioned scotch, when Gianna's hand brushed Maryn's forearm. She leaned back and over, and brushed her lips against Gianna's ear, in return, ending with a slight smirk as she met her eyes.

One of the perks of working security for a large corporate organisation, she discovered, was a propensity when traveling for being placed in exceedingly nice hotel rooms.

\----

_Omega._

There was something very surreal about all of this. Surreal, and…she hated to say it. Dishonest. She didn't want her thoughts to linger on the reason for her sitting in this booth.

It was not the sort of conversation she tended to have, or that she'd really ever had with anyone. Shepard felt like her usual blunt self, a little too graceless for an operation like this, but maybe that was what made it work. The woman across from her always seemed to give these little looks, these little cocks of her head, when Shepard spoke, when she answered her questions especially, as though there might have been a couple answers she would have expected and Shepard had given none of them. But in a good way. An intriguing way. She seemed minutely disarmed, over and over, a sheet-thin layer stripped away each few minutes like the click of a timer.

Shepard wasn't so impressed by most of the questions, or the posturing. Because it looked so much like posturing. Taking your own natural inclinations and building over them until you could say things that looked like they were deep. (The only deep things were the holes you'd have to bore down into the packaging to find the bits of truth.) But the little twitches of Morinth's eyebrows, that said hey, maybe I'm intrigued, maybe this isn't someone I've got figured out - maybe that did draw her in a bit. The potential there.

Shepard knew what she had to do. Had lived too long and in too many of the right places to know what the possibility of redemption didn't look like. But that didn't make her any happier when, at the soft touch of blue skin under a black sleeve (purpled under the club lights like a bruise), to brown skin under a black dress strap, and the hint of a promise in deep-set eyes, she felt something like foreknowledge woven through with a mesh of guilt beneath in the pit of her stomach at how this evening would have to end.

\----

_Rakhana._

"I know I went into this knowing full well it'd probably get cut short by something or another. We both did. But just..."

"I am not upset with what you did, Siha. I am committed to making the most of what time we do have left. But I do understand that circumstances will occasionally intervene to the detriment of many things. Despite all of our best efforts."

"Yeah. Yeah. You'd just think, you pull your entire team out alive from a mission they all said none of us would survive… you'd think maybe I'm allowed a little down time that involves the people I love rather than sitting in a cell."

\----

_the Normandy._

"Hey Ash," she murmured. Low voice. Still, silent cabin besides the bare vibrations of her voice. Most of the time she could hear the hum of the rest of the ship - was it the new design of the Normandy or the new design of her senses? she was never sure - but here in her own cabin, that was one of the places where the only sound was the music she would play on occasion. Less often lately.

It had only been glancing over at her bedside table. At the photographs there. She wasn't normally one to talk with the dead as though they could hear, but her sleep had been interrupted a couple times by the dead talking to her in the past few weeks, so maybe it seemed reasonable to start up a conversation in response.

"Feels weird without you around, y'know."

Lots of the same people. Nearly the same ship. It was close enough to the days during the hunt for Saren that sometimes she caught herself thinking, hey, wonder how Ash's doing, wonder if she's down in the mess hall, wonder if she'd be down to go have a practise spar…

Maybe what she wanted was to forget everything happening now. Saren didn't seem so scary in hindsight. Not next to a galaxy full of Reapers. Not next to the holes.

Funny how the holes, the changes, seemed to creep in onto the old memories too though, like they'd always been there. She'd never gone out of uniform in front of her crew, back then - not sure when that had stopped seeming so important, now when she thought about it - but even though it'd never happened back then, the thought of Ash sitting up here, the both of them in hoodies and sweats rather than uniforms, just laughing or bullshitting or talking serious stuff about whatever, that seemed entirely natural.

But memories had a tendency to wrap around the present, shift around slightly until they'd managed a passable camouflage to look like one continuous segment stretching undefined through time. Easier to notice it when you could segment that time with a broken off missing two years.

"Huh. Guess you were always the one better at words, weren't you."

\----

_Earth._

"You still thinking of staying on, once you aren't a big ball of bruises any more?" Sam mused. It was said with a smile, one that still had more than a few pieces of high-spirited incredulity working their way to the edges. "Or has somebody convinced you to take an early retirement?"

Maryn was already smiling herself, but now she laughed, laughed right through the wince from the pain in her jostled ribs. "Convinced me?" she repeated, with the added stress, and she put her good arm around Sam's shoulder. "Like it wasn't an idea I'd come up with on my own? You think I don't deserve a nice, cushy retirement on some pretty planet with a sunny beaches and gardens and fancy resorts everywhere?"

The corners of Sam's mouth twitched, like she was trying to hold back a grin; but the grin snuck out anyway in the form of a good-natured smirk. She gave Maryn a playful shove. (Just a tiny hesitation beforehand, to stop and make sure it wouldn't be in any place still overly injured. Maryn wasn't about to mention she'd noticed. But it made her chest feel a little tight in a good way, even so.)

Maryn snuck a quick kiss to Sam's lips in retaliation. "I'm not actually looking to retire, you know," she said, a few moments later. "Not yet. My generous gift to the Systems Alliance. Besides, I'd get bored."

Sam had cocked to the side questioningly when she first began to clarify. But now the smile was back, small and honest rather than playful and Maryn Shepard could appreciate both.

"Then I'll be there with you."


End file.
